Atlanta is Flooded

Richard Flood, Chief Curator, New Museum

On a recent dreary Saturday, Richard Flood ventured forth from NYC's New Museum to the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, where he was called upon to explain why Matthew Barney, why Richard Prince, and why him.  Like an experienced dinner party guest, he related the evolution of his career as, well, a series of dinner parties:  serendipitous opportunities that arose out of his interests, relationships, and the strange way that life can present a solution at just the right juncture to just the right person.  His gifts of story and humor combined with his sensitivity to the artist have enabled him to shepherd artists to the forefront through multiple contexts, including Art Forum, Barbara Gladstone Gallery, and the Walker Art Center. 

Swirling around in decades of anecdote, some choice tidbits:

• On being a managing editor:  "The most horrible, brutal job you can get."
• On first going into the unknown Matthew Barney's studio:  "I walked into the future, it was nothing like anything I'd ever seen, an incredible fusion between sports and art."
• On reaching out to the unappreciated Richard Prince:  "He was sitting in the dark like a dog who had been horribly abused."
• On his decision to go to Minneapolis:  "Both of my parents had died.  I was shut down and negative.  I was in analysis.  I didn't like who I had become, how I was using my humor."
• On Minneapolis:  "I never liked Minneapolis but grew to fall in love with Minnesota."
• On working with artists: "When you ask an artist to do a solo exhibition, it's a huge weight on them -- you're asking them to take off their clothes and stand there naked and be assessed, and the market has changed and the critical marketplace has changed."
• On Robert Gober's "Slides of a Changing Painting":  "It's the Rosetta Stone for his practice."
• On the disappearance of major works into private collections:  "It's an American problem."
  
• On younger staff guiding him through the "prairie dog village" of the blogosphere during the recent controversy surrounding "The Imaginary Museum," an exhibition that will expose the private collection of museum trustee Dakis Joannou:  "There's a growing crisis in print media.  Horrible things are happening to newspapers.  I have 23 year old interns who have told me they have never touched a newspaper.  I am starting to doubt the necessity of the catalog.  We are walking into an entirely new world.  [I decided to] embrace the controversy and found a brand new public.  We'll go through it and learn from it.  Of course, it will be worse when the show goes up -- the collection is provocative."
• On the provincialism of NYC, affirming in part the insularity that affects cultural institutions including the New Museum:  "Get rid of it, get New York out of your system, and start a conversaton with the rest of the country."